From behind the barbed-wire fence that surrounds the detention camp, Bush - "yes, like George W" - Faoud describes how he came by the wounds on his neck and arm. "I was stopped by two criminal soldiers in Darfur," he says. "I was shot in the arm and in the leg and my neck was broken. I ran away."

He kept on running. His journey took him from Sudan to Libya where he paid a Libyan trafficker $800 (£455) to be put with 25 others on a small open boat that they hoped was bound for Italy. The boat did not make it that far and they were picked up by the Maltese authorities. Now, along with hundreds of others, mainly Africans, he is detained in grim conditions, uncertain of the future.

Bush Faoud is part of a fast-growing influx that has polarised opinion on Malta and presented the EU with a moral and political dilemma. As conflicts continue in Africa and the profitable trade in human trafficking soars, tens of thousands of people are prepared to risk their lives in perilous crossings of the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea to seek a new life in Europe. Libyan traffickers sell them frail open craft with room for around 30 people and tell them the journey to Italy is easy. Many drown.

Malta joined the EU only last year. As a member state it is obliged to deal with the asylum applications of the new arrivals, none of whom want to stay in Malta but all of whom are detained while their applications are processed. Malta received 116 asylum cases in 2001 but by last year that had multiplied to 1,227. In the past week alone a further 300 people arrived, rescued by the Maltese armed forces from a watery death. Many fail to gain refugee status so they hover in limbo, unable to return to their countries, unwanted by tiny, overcrowded Malta and by mainland European governments unsympathetic to African immigrants.

"Most of them come by mistake, they have never heard of Malta, but the boat breaks down or they lose their way," says Marija Schranz of the Jesuit Refugee Service, one of the organisations dealing with the arrivals.

Those detained, now 1,500 of them, must remain in Safi and other barracks while a decision is made on their status, a process that may take 18 months. Those denied asylum, a further 1,000 at present, may be given "humanitarian protection" which allows them to stay in open centres, mainly hostels in surplus buildings, and seek low-paid work, but not travel elsewhere in Europe. They are fingerprinted to stop them reapplying elsewhere. Many slip quietly away to Italy or France and try again, only to be shipped back to Malta which is obliged, under EU law, to keep them.

Their presence has provoked a reaction. This week, a Defend the Nation demonstration, organised by the National Republican Alliance - whose secretary general, Philip Beattie, says a "silent invasion" is under way - took place in Valetta amid scuffles and disputes. Mr Beattie, who works at the University of Malta, says he believes that most of the arrivals are economic migrants who are taking Maltese jobs, and that to release them would present a danger to Maltese people of a "social, moral and medicinal nature".

He told the rally: "We appeal to all those against us not to call us racist. We are proud to be Maltese and we just don't want to become the toilet of the Mediterranean."

The hostility has had echoes on the ground. In an open centre in Marsa, Salah Abdul Rahman from Mogadishu shows a letter that has been thrown in. "Illegal immigrant bummers," it reads, "we do not want you in Malta. Get out or we will start killing you. KKK."

"We have no room, it's a small island," says Paul Galea, who lives near Safi and describes the detention camp as "the black bastards' huts". "Some of them are on the game. They smell."

The open centre in Hal Far was once a British barracks, rough and ready but now being patched up. The presence of the asylum seekers has not gone down well locally, according to one Maltese refugee worker there. "I take some of them home with me so that they have a change of scenery and I would get phone calls saying, 'Why did you have a black person in your house?'"

The government is investigating the trafficking operation and proposing laws to deal with asylum seekers. The home affairs minister, Tonio Borg, says there is clearly a criminal organisation behind the arrivals.

The Africans who make up the majority of the asylum seekers - there are also a few Iraqis, Pakistanis, Egyptians and Palestinians - know they are not welcome but are bewildered at being locked up. In January a demonstration by detainees in the camp was violently suppressed by police and 26 required hospital treatment. Amnesty International and the UN high commissioner for refugees protested.

The government does not as yet permit journalists access to Safi to talk to the detainees, but a farm track leads to the back of the camp where it is possible to speak to them through the wire. All are desperate to leave Malta.

Ahmed Mahmoud, 17, from Sudan, says: "My family were killed in Sudan, probably by the Janjaweed. I wanted to go to Italy - I want to study." Mahmoud Swadi, from Eritrea, describes the journey to Malta: "We came across the Sahara for five days and 13 of our group did not make it."

Harry Vassallo, the chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika, the island's Green party, says he is appalled by conditions in Safi. "I'm no psychiatrist but you could see people walking round like zombies. It was completely inhuman." He adds: "We cannot take every refugee that comes out of Africa and we need other countries to take them, but none of this can ever allow us to treat people inhumanly ... 1.2 million tourists come every year and the island hasn't sunk yet."

In Balzan's open centre, a former convent, Abdul Qani, 20, talks of his voyage and how the boat ran out of fuel. "I was afraid when the petrol was finished but through the mercy of God we are here. I would like to go to England and to train to be a doctor. Every person here is alone. People here see a black person, they say we are not going to give you work. The bus drivers do not stop for us. We have peace but we do not have life."

Idriss Hassan, 34, a Somalian, also understands why there is hostility. "Malta is a small stone on the middle of the Mediterranean. We don't want to take their jobs. I have no idea what my future will be." He pulls up his T-shirt to wipe the tears running down his cheeks.

At the open centre in Masra, Terry Gosden, the Englishman who runs it, says of the 149 residents: "They don't want to be here. Many of the immigrants are middle class and my heart bleeds for Somalia and Eritrea - what will happen to those countries without these people? We enable them to use this place to rest. There is a lot of post-traumatic stress and they are extremely conscious of the international mood."

Running the centre's cafe is Safiyo Mohamoud, 19, who explains how she arrived there with her aunt. "From Somalia we went by car to Ethiopia and then Sudan and Khartoum. Then I was in Libya for one year working as a cleaner and saved up money - $800 - to pay for the boat. If I had known how dangerous it was, I wouldn't have gone ... I would like to go to England but I know it is expensive." Her application for refugee status has been rejected and so she has humanitarian protection until she can be returned to Somalia or admitted to a "safe third country".

There lies the dilemma: which country in the EU will admit her? A Maltese government spokesman says it sees the situation as an emergency, similar to an earthquake, and is seeking EU help. So far, the Netherlands has offered to take some people, and the Czech Republic and three other countries are considering.

"One has to point out," the spokesman says, "that Malta, albeit the smallest state in Europe with the highest population density, has one of the highest acceptance rates, with nearly 60% being granted either refugee status or humanitarian protection."

For Bush Daoud and his fellow detainees, gazing out through the wire at a tantalising glimpse of freedom, the future remains unclear. "We would like to be free," he says, adding, with perhaps a deeper truth than he realises, "We are dreaming."